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Of course, the Uptown vs. Kenwood route debate has been beaten to death. But there's more idiocy; a freight reroute that was never promised despite politicians in Minneapolis saying it was. And the freight railroad was never asked how they feel about it until the 11th hour, and once they said no it was one of the final nails in the coffin for that idea. The Met Council wasted a couple years trying to convince St. Louis Park and the railroad that their moronic freight reroute idea would be fine, and when they said no the Met Council made the plan more idiotic.

What’s crazy is that this particularly moronic and self-inflicted problem regarding the freight rail was solved over 4 years ago and we STILL haven’t even started building the damn thing. At the time, I was strongly of the opinion that the failure to relocate the freight rail meant that the project should’ve been kicked back into the Alternatives Analysis, as the earlier route decision was itself based on a major change which did not come to pass. The reason given that we shouldn’t do that was that it would delay the project by several years, which is downright comical in retrospect. We could’ve started this over from scratch in 2013 and not been too far off from the currently estimated opening in 2022.

The state's not funding the project at this point anyway, so I don't see how Dibble's quibbles are anything more than a distraction. I guess the state leg could try to pass a bill banning the project, but Dayton would just veto it. At this point if the Met Council gets an acceptable bid and the FTA follows through on their funding, I think it's getting built.

As far as the FTA following through, so far we haven't seen anything to suggest they'd reject it. Even after the new administration came in, they've generally seemed to be working towards funding it and have ignored the more outlandish requests from state legislators like "can we build more roads with the matching money instead?"

What I don't get is why we're negotiating with the railroads so late in the process. Wouldn't it make more sense to do this a few years ago and if any changes are made then renegotiate.

I visited TC&W in Glencoe a year and a half ago. I forget who it was, but he said dealing with the Met Council on Southwest was a pain in the you know what. I should've asked for details, but I can't say I'm surprised.